I see questions like “why hasn’t Trump gotten CIA’d if he’s ruining the American Empire?” I think the capitalist factions in power have their reasons to back this tariff terrorism.
Are Trump, Vance, and Musk actually morons who believe the American propaganda? Of course, but the real oligarchs who back their regime aren’t real morons. Everyone in power since Obama has seen the writing on the wall: that China is the rising power and the American Empire is on the decline. The Obama faction decided to “Pivot to Asia” to slow this decline. Use military power and the Trans Pacific Partnership to isolate China as best as they could, hold onto whatever power they have in the region at all costs.
Trump in his first time, and later Biden, continued this logic but with emphasis on Europe. Trump in 2017 wanted to keep NATO in line and Biden used Ukraine and CHIPS to deepen EU reliance on American oil. Again, the overall strategy is “hold onto what we have to stave off American loss of international power.”
But now it’s clear that the US does not have control over traditional allies. Pissrael does as it pleases, Russia hasn’t been brought to heel, and the EU wants to move closer to China. What is a US imperialist to do, more of the same?
Along comes Trump’s return. The financial class that really runs this country hasn’t stopped his trade wars, hasn’t stopped his dismantling of soft power like USAID, hasn’t disciplined him with a capital strike/flight. This means to me, they are willing to go in on the strategy. Trump is pressing the economic nuke, he’s crashing the global economy and betting that the US will get hurt less than the rest of the world. And then maybe, EU and China will get hurt enough that the US can take big enough bites of their meals to survive.
In our reading group on Super Imperialism, we read about how US dollar hegemony is based on the recycling of dollars through US Treasury bonds. Essentially, the US is a net importer and runs a high deficit. As the US buys from advanced economies like China, EU, and Japan those nations build up a surplus of US dollars. Those countries don’t want to spend USD on goods, because putting those dollars back into the material economy would lower the comparative value of USD. That would mean the RMB, Euros, and yen would have a harder time competing against American goods. These countries NEED the US (and other countries) to buy their goods and so they need USD to be stable. So they purchase US Treasury bonds, which gives them a productive investment without hurting the dollar. The US benefits immensely from this which is exactly what Obama-ites want to protect. It also means advanced economies are literally invested in the US economy as a major store of value.
However, this relationship probably can’t last forever. So Trump and cronies are pulling the biggest card they have, the card nobody expected them to play. The world runs on American dollars so they’re pulling the rug out. They’re betting that the PRC and EU will be so hurt by a trade war that they’ll either crash and burn or come to the table to beg for relief. Sure China is the world’s factory, but the CPC has shown its main goal is stability for the Chinese people so it’s a logical assumption they’ll compromise rather than crash. The EU, Canada, and Mexico will surely hurt which will open up their industries for US banks to buy in at a bargain.
The logic is, if the system is gonna fall apart then the US should break it on its own terms rather than let the gradual decline happen. Will the bet pan out for US oligarchs? I really have no idea.
Of course, but the real oligarchs who back their regime aren’t real morons.
These are the people who thought they would defeat China by investing in it - or worse, their children. The Dulles brothers are long gone.
The financial class that really runs this country hasn’t stopped his trade wars, hasn’t stopped his dismantling of soft power like USAID, hasn’t disciplined him with a capital strike/flight. This means to me, they are willing to go in on the strategy.
What mechanism would they use to stop him if they wanted to? Where does their cabal meet and who takes their secret orders?
We need to get away from this idealist conspiratorial thinking. The capitalist class is fractious and divided, and the power of the capitalist state, including its elected officials, is very real. It’s shocking to see a bunch of Marxists all talking to each other about the secret hidden forces pulling the strings from the shadows in order to justify doomerism. How many times in history have we seen myopic, inbred, hubristic ruling classes bring about the destruction of their own power? I’ll answer: every single time an empire fell.
Exactly as any Marxist-Leninist could tell you, divisions in ruling classes are inevitable as personal ambition and ideology begin to fester in calcified strictures. The further temporally removed from the foundations of those structures, the less the ruling class understands how they truly operate without some internal correction mechanism (like a Marxist party). The short-term self interest that is the engine of capitalist development and innovation abhors nurturing and developing systems like that.
I mean, just apply your mode of thinking to the billion other ways capitalism consumes itself and it become clear there’s no one directing the ship besides the idiot who seized the wheel in the last election. Why hasn’t the financial capitalist class withdrawn from China, even though investment there has been building its own destroyer? Why haven’t they addressed climate change, which will obliterate the material basis of the economic system and crumble their power structures? Why don’t they build cheap, efficient livable cities instead of costly, crumbling car-dependent suburbs? Over and over, the capitalist class consistently turns away from the obviously correct long term decision for their own survival and profits because some dipshit from Texas can make a quick buck. We have seen them destroy their own support systems, put in place by their predecessors, because they were too ignorant to understand they actually depend on those things.
Capitalism is defined by the internal contradictions it is unable to resolve. It’s not capable, as a system, of solving the problems it creates. It can only find a new way to profit off of them, and it’s always less profit for a shorter time. Always! That is why the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is Marx’s most important contribution.
What capitalism produces above all else are its own gravediggers. We have known this would happen for two hundred years. It has happened before and it will happen again.
Where does their cabal meet and who takes their secret orders?
“Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: ‘Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?’ For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it ‘planning’ and ‘strategizing’ – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.”Parenti always relevant.
They do it open too lol. Davos is literally for economic coordination.
They do it open too
Yeah that’s my point. You see what they do and why because they tell you.
Frankly not relevant here. What OP is looking for is a secret explanation of capitalist brilliance that makes the obvious, open capitalist stupidity an actually brilliant plan. That’s not how it works. OP’s assertion, at least for the premise of this thread, is that Trump’s obviously destructive actions are actually the result of behind the scenes manipulation whose scope and scheme we cannot possibly ascertain beyond conspiratorial speculation. What we’re actually witnessing is capitalist self-consumption.
I don’t think we disagree with each other at all, comrade. I was not suggesting that this is some master stroke by the Illuminati meant to permanently entrench American empires. What I meant to explain is that they know they are crashing the global economy with their tariffs, that their reasons behind the scenes are not the justifications they give to their constituents.
Of course the contradictions of capitalism sew the seeds of their own destruction, this is the natural result of the financial turn of the 80s/90s. This is the logical extension of their playbook since the fall of the USSR: destroy existing economic systems so the financial class can scoop up whatever pieces they can. It is a system that needs crises to sustain itself. Primitive destruction then primitive accumulation.
Will JDPON Don successfully end the American empire with his own cannibalistic ambitions and short sidedness? Will this be the last hoo-rah of finance capitalists to grow their portfolios before they collapse again? Will this straight up cause WW3?
I don’t know. What I was trying to explain was that “Trump is a moron who can’t manage the empire” is not a sufficient explanation of these events. That is liberal great man theory and as Marxists we must look to materialist explanations. Materially, China growing it’s economic base while the US holds on by threads and this is a hail Mary from the financial class using the only tools they know how to use. If it doesn’t work, I won’t be surprised by using a material solution: war.
What I was trying to explain was that “Trump is a moron who can’t manage the empire” is not a sufficient explanation of these events. That is liberal great man theory and as Marxists we must look to materialist explanations.
No, it isn’t. It would be liberal great man theory if I said Trump rose through great force of will to wrest control of the yoke of history and then fucked it all up when he got there. Great man theory is not the odea that the decisions of political leaders matter, but that they are the basis from which history flows. Trump os exactly the opposite of that. Fascism (or fascism-like) self-destructive policies are the inevitable result of the material forces that drive capitalism, and Trump simply imparts a particular flavor to an imperial collapse that began long before he entered the scene and which will have an impact far beyond the role of his specific choices in accelerating it. If Kamala had won, she’d only stave this off for a few years - the US was already on the decline as the hegemon, it was already second fiddle to China, and BRICS was already laying the groundwork for a new world order. No president could have been elected under these conditions that could shift things by more than a few degrees. We just happened to get the stupidest, most brutish option.
great post comrade
an idea I can’t shake is that all these mercurial tarrif announcements and backpedals are being coordinated for a group of trump admin insiders. basically, taking the accumulation strategy honed over generations by the pelosis and the bushes to do truly insider trading with knowledge ahead of policy moves… except the trump project is doing the lightning round version with crazy destabilizing announcements, dip buying and rug pulls/shorts.
I can’t shake this idea, because this is how the administrators of capital formations think. they will fuck an entire complex system up royally if they can use it to redirect and extract its value into their pockets. like a CEO who sees the writing on the wall and loots a company issuing huge bonuses right as it goes into a receivership caused by the CEOs absurd machinations.
and this inside view is only being shared with the capital formations contributing to the trump project, exploiting the fractious nature of capitalism but enticing it’s administrators into playing along, because they might just get invited to the chatroom before the next crater/bounce.
I think this is it as well. This seems like they see the ship of the US is sinking and are just jumping off onto their lifeboats with as much gold as they can carry before everyone else notices.
Trump turns to Mike Waltz
No, stay - they’ll be expecting one of us in the wreckage, brother
What is more terrifying, this being the financiers plan or the people in power being so dumb they earnestly believe in Trump’s rhetoric?
Watching the Russian offensive in Ukraine, I have been forced to realize that most of the world’s leaders are dumb, and American leaders are especially bad. The strikes that broke out during Biden’s regime and the shooting of a healthcare CEO has scared the porkies. I think they are wanting to punish labor as hard as they possibly can, and Trump’s tariffs have been sold to them as the price to pay to do it. That is why DEI has been so thoroughly attacked as well. I think this is all a myopic attack on labor and a culling of people who may fight back. But then again we can, unfortunately, both be right.
Unfortunately I think we both are likely correct. However, the right doesn’t realize that punishing the imperial core by taking away their cheap treats could backfire in a huge way. If the treats flow, USians will largely remain subservient. If they can’t get hamburder and haircuts then they might actually do something cool.
Rome didn’t fall until the panem et circenses stopped
If you think about it, Erdogan is the current ruler to the Roman empire:
Romans > Byzantines > Ottomans > Turkey
And what does he sell? That’s right. Watermelon, both a circus and a meal all in one. He’s the real mastermind behind all of this.
that’s the hunger games from The Hunger Games franchise film: The Hunger Games, based on the novel The Hunger Games for us plebs
Hunger? Like when no have burger?
No burger and no fries, even!
no brurger?
that’s bread and circuses for us plebs
Wait that’s what it means? I thought Romans liked Panera and circles…
real oligarchs who back their regime aren’t real morons
There was a time when this was true, but I genuinely think we are living in the Age of Morons right now.
hasn’t disciplined him with a capital strike
What would a capital strike look like? And how would that differ from the stock market crashing in response to tariffs the bourgeoisie don’t support?
If a business coup couldn’t stop FDR, what makes people think that another one could stop Trump? Why would they want to? All that matters to a capitalist is their relative power. Trump is offering them income tax cuts on the backs of taxes on american consumption. That’s all there is to it. The American Empire literally doesn’t matter to an oligarch as long as they get to keep living their best life. There’s no patriotism, there’s no love for the game, there’s only class consciousness and as long as Trump is a reactionary capitalist and a member of the oligarch class, he’ll be in their good graces.
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-economic-masterplan-unherd/
article that really hones in exactly a lot of what you wrote. and thank you for posting your post too
what i still can’t understand is how is wall st. and his handlers okay with this? short-term mindset only? or are they truly thinking longterm?
because if trade deficits shrink that means less foreign money going into wall st. no way they’re okay with that?
what i still can’t understand is how is wall st. and his handlers okay with this? short-term mindset only? or are they truly thinking longterm?
Could be that they understand fully that this is their one and only chance to make a last stand against communism.
They’re just in “throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks” mode because the status quo is untenable. Right now, the shit they’re throwing is mostly counterproductive to what they want. I suppose you could say that they’re being tactically stupid but strategically wise or at least strategically not-stupid.
Seems sort of like flipping the game table under the belief that they can use finance to pick up the pieces on the floor faster than everyone else.
yep. the world system of perpetual US deficit is going to crash and the US will be left with no manufacturing, broke ass government, and no financial sector. i’m exaggerating but also not.
the more i read the more i really see this as Trumpists, neo-reactionaries, certain techbros, and others just being like “shut the fuck up wall street this is for your own good.”
i thought all of it was just shoring up funds to continue the 2017-2025 trump era tax cuts, but it’s way bigger than that. they’re legit trying to get all these other countries to gut interest rates and keep them forever bound to the US dollar.
This is pure conspiracy brained on my part, but I get the feeling that those in power in the US, the oligarchs and such, know the ship is sinking. So rather than continue trying to bail water they’re stripping anything valuable they can find out of the boat and drilling holes to send everyone else into a distracted panic.
There’s also a weird religious aspect to it where some of them might think bringing famine, war, pestilence and death might bring Jesus back to save them.
In other words I think the lot of them have gone suicidally delusional.
I strongly suspect a substantial part of them are also techno-eco-facsists who see climate change as the final solution to the working class question. They see the way out of the master-slave dialectic through technology, especially AI. On one side, AI that is perfectly obedient to their masters will replace the working class and on the other side, climate change will exterminate the working class that is rendered obsolete by AI. AI accelerating climate change is killing two birds with one stone in their eyes.
However, the ultimate contradiction is that even with real AI, they want a nonhuman person that is smart enough to solve complex problems but stupid enough to obey a bunch of incompetent asshole failchildren without question.
Agree completely. Christianity was originally a doomsday cult and the bones are still there. As contradictions sharpen in the material base, why wouldn’t the Superstructure of religion alter to reflect the coming collapse.
Or they are just stupid and get high on their own supply (ideology).
Porque no los dos
Your post assumes foresight or even long term strategic planning from people using ChatGPT to make tariff charts that everyone else can figure out. We live in the dumbest timeline, which means, Trump believes tariffs are good, because he and his cadre are dumbasses, and thinks tariffs are the only thing needed to reshore american industry.
The only indication to your point is threats of negotiating with countries to “open up their countries” to american industry (deregulate) as a way to stave off or reduce tariffs, taking a page of the IMF’s playbook for force privatization.
Copium Addendum:
Could this be the push to make China finally de-dollarize? Maybe. Like I said, the CPC has shown that Chinese stability is their main economic goal which is why they haven’t de-dollarized yet. They can’t make the decision to do full socialism if it means a drop in living quality. If the Trump admin makes that decision for them, proves that the US is an untrustworthy, unstable trade partner then maybe the crisis will be big enough for a real reorganization of the economy towards socialism. And just maybe they can pull more nations of the global south with them.
Doomer time: No they’ll just liberalize the economy further
Bloomer time: US starts the Taiwan proxy war and the Chinese liberal class is purged.
I mean I can’t call war between two nuclear powers as a bloomer take lol, but I agree that it would take a crisis of that scale for the PRC to deal with its liberal infestation.
The doomer in me thinks its going to be a reset of the Korean civil war which in that case goodbye in advance.
i mean, they should have either do gradual introduction (say 2% per month or whatever) for gradual reshoring, or do divide and conquer politics (aka create scab nations, like entity), like first apply to africa, then to eu, then to taiwan, then to japan etc.
So they just dumb
Yes, my post was already long enough as is but I agree. I think that they are both dumb dumbs AND have a plan that follows logical action. There’s something very Trump about “just fucking blow the whole thing up.” Since material conditions determine history, I have no doubt that a different faction in power would come to your same conclusion about gradually destroying dependent nations.
I would push back on a few points. I am pretty sure the US is entirely pleased with Isreal. We just have to fuss about it occasionally to keep up appearances.
Given that we have a class of oligarchs that have more money than most countries I can’t see them worried overmuch about which ones they dominate. To them money has stopped to have any meaning and resources are more important. So crashing and economy here or there to ensure they have power is a rational move.
you’re a big guy
:for you:
China has been getting out of Treasury bonds for a while now. Japan is holding a huge pile though
More reason to crash it all now while China is still holding.
![What is Trump actually doing? Crashing this economy...with no survivors! [Effort post]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/d89c4ad7-4316-49dc-a494-d804a1ca5e9b.jpeg){kind=link}